A closing device for a vehicle door, and having an external door actuator, normally includes an external door handle which is coupled through a force transfer device to an operating element of the door lock in the form of an operating lever. If the door lock is in the unlocked state (e.g. because it has previously been unlocked by a key or remote control), then the door can be opened by means of the external door handle whereby the external handle acts on the door lock through the force transfer device and the operating lever. The operating lever thus interacts with the door lock so that when the door lock is unlocked the door can be opened by means of the external door handle.
A shortcoming associated with such a lock, is that any deformation to the external door skin such as caused by a crash, for example, and transferred to the operating lever would bring the risk of unintended opening of the door in a deformation condition.
DE 197 44 384 A1 provides a closing device for a vehicle door which has a lock with release lever (operating lever) fixed on the inner panel of the vehicle door, and an external door actuator which acts on the release lever through a force transfer element. In order to prevent deformations of the door caused by a crash from transferring to the release lever, the force transfer element is formed as a Bowden cable with excess length. This known closing device, however, has the drawback that the Bowden cable does not occupy a defined position inside the vehicle door because of its excess length.
For a defined guidance of the Bowden cable inside the vehicle door it would therefore be necessary to fix this by means of additional fasteners such as clips. For this purpose the Bowden cable must however be accessible from the interior of the vehicle. This limits the flexibility considerably when assembling the vehicle door. An example here would be fitting the vehicle door where several functional components of the door, such as the door lock and window lever are prefitted on a door module support. Should this door module support be fixed on the inner skin of the vehicle door before the external door actuator is attached to the outer skin and connected to the door lock, then there would not be sufficient access to the Bowden cable from inside the door.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,848,909 describes an operating device for a motor vehicle lock which has a coupling rod for coupling an operating handle to a lever mechanism. The coupling rod is mounted for swivel movement on the side of the operating handle. On the side of the lever mechanism the coupling rod is guided with an engagement element in an oblong hole mounted in the lever mechanism and serving to compensate tolerances.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a closing device for motor vehicles which prevents the unintended release of the operating element of the lock coupled to the external door actuator in the event of deformation to the external door skin and which, at the same time, eliminates the disadvantages of conventional closing devices, as described above.